Keeping The Faith
by DancingInTheDark85
Summary: When everything goes to hell, there's always been one person who has kept their faith in John Kennex. A Kennex and Maldonado friendship fic with plenty of angst.


When everything goes to hell, there's always been one person who has kept their faith in John Kennex. A Kennex and Maldonado friendship fic. Rated for descriptions of injury and because cops swear when upset.

* * *

Sandra would never admit it to anyone else, but John had always been her favourite. Ever since he'd joined her team as a fresh faced recruit and she'd been assigned his reporting sergeant. Sure, his intake had been a good one, the best new recruits after a succession of mediocre ones, but even amongst them, John had stood out. He'd been cocky, a lot of young cops were, but he always had a smile on his face, did as he was asked without complaint and he worked hard, keen to make his own name in the force and distance himself from his father's successes and failures.

He'd only been a beat cop for six weeks before he'd saved his first life and taken another. The dispatch channel had gone into a frenzy, a major incident had been declared as a man had opened fire in a shopping mall. Sandra had been sent out to assist her team and had found chaos, members of the public were running and screaming, just as many were interfering and trying to record what was happening, all good material for social media sites, coming to you live from the scene of someone poor bastard's personal disaster. Sandra had to push passed the crowds that were barely being held at bay by the attending officers. When she got to the eye of the storm she stopped short a moment. There was Kennex, bloodstained sleeves rolled up to his elbows, kneeling over the body of a woman as he pumped away at her chest in a desperate attempt at CPR. Sat on the other side of the woman was a young girl clutching a soft toy fox, maybe about five or six years old, and despite his obvious exhaustion and furious efforts he had her fixed with his soulful eyes and kept talking to her. "Keep looking at me, Darlin', not her. She's gonna be fine, just look at me. Tell me, what's your fox's name?" Off to the side, where his partner was trying to hold back the crowds, was another body, that of a middle aged man, two neat bullet wounds in his chest.

It only took Sandra a beat to recover herself and she rushed to his side. She gave him a grim smile of encouragement, "You're doing great Kennex, the ambulance was right behind me," before taking the girl in her arms and leading her away from the devastation, speaking to her softly.

Miraculously, John's CPR had worked and the woman had been saved. Her husband, the asshole who'd shot her in a crowded mall in front of their child, had been dead before he'd even hit the floor. Sandra had been swept up into securing the initial investigation, ensuring her officers preserved the scene, seized CCTV, took witness statements and called in everyone that was needed; the murder squad, CSI's, her superiors and IA to approve the shooting, as well as getting child protective services to look after the poor distraught girl.

After she was convinced that her team had everything under control she sought out John. He'd gone in the ambulance with the woman as continuity officer, should she die, someone would be needed to give a statement to the coroner to ensure that there had been no tampering with any evidence that would come from her body. Sandra had wanted to find someone else to take up the grim task but the incident had her short staffed and John had hopped into the ambulance and taken the job upon himself before she'd managed to find anyone. She found him sat dejectedly outside the operating theatre at the local hospital, head in his hands, still stained with blood. They were alone in the hallway so she'd sat down beside him and enveloped the nineteen year old in a hug.

The way he'd handled that incident had been a sign of things to come. It took two weeks of IA investigation to clear him of the shooting, during which he was suspended as per protocol, although the number of witnesses and the clear CCTV footage meant that it had just been a formality. He came back, practically bouncing into the parade room and eager to get back to work. That energy seemed to be boundless, even as the years wore on and the colleagues in his graduating class slowly succumbed to the weary cynicism that comes to most cops. When Sandra moved to investigations and became a lieutenant, it was easy to convince her superiors to bring Kennex with her. John sailed through the detectives exams but clearly wasn't destined for a suit and a desk and so soon found himself on a task force gathering intel and leading raids, his own promotion to detective sergeant happening soon after.

Sandra had been on leave the day it happened, visiting her sister up north. She'd known about the raid but the first she'd heard about it going so horribly wrong was on the news. She'd sat on her sister's sofa, watching the horror unfold on TV while phoning everyone she could think of to get an accurate idea of what had happened. When she finally got someone to pick up, the news left her devastated. She'd flown home that afternoon and went straight to the station.

There, everyone was as equally shell shocked as she felt, and yet the cases still kept coming. She found herself setting down at an empty terminal and arranging detectives from other districts to come in and cover for her depleted and distraught team. With the whole of the police force short as it was, the task was almost impossible, but soon the help started filtering in and she could get them situated. By the time she'd handed over to a lieutenant from District 3, it was almost twenty hours since the incident had occurred and twenty six since she'd slept.

Still, she didn't go home, instead she went to the hospital and sought out her wayward officer, just like she had all those years ago. This time, no motherly hugs were going to fix things, she was shown into his private room in the ICU and introduced to the nurse who stood watching over him at the bottom of his bed. Until he was stabilised he'd be under constant one on one supervision, it was explained. Sandra didn't hear anything else that was said to her, she just couldn't take her eyes off him, couldn't hear anything but the gush of blood in her ears.

He was grey, that was her first thought, his skin had that slack lifelessness to it that she'd only seen in dead people before, waxy and discoloured and unreal looking. His pale lips hung slackly round the tube of the ventilator they had forced down his throat. His dark scruffy hair and five o'clock shadow, stark against the paleness of everything else, was the only indication that she was even looking at the right person. There were cuts and scrapes on his face, some held together with steri-strips, others left to heal on their own, but she'd seen him scraped up before and they did little to indicate just what he'd been through. The thin sheet had been pulled up high to his chest but she could see the swathes of bandages hidden underneath. His arms had been placed over the top, laying loosely at his sides. They were covered in heavy purple bruising and more scratches, there was an IV port fitted into the crook of each elbow and another one on the back of his left hand, all with drips attached and feeding slowly into him, a pulse-ox meter on one finger measuring his vitals with a steady beep. But perhaps the most devastating of all was the way the sheet just fell away on his right side, a huge gaping void where his right leg was supposed to be. Sandra fell into the nearby chair and sobbed.

In the end he'd been awake for three days before she found out. She'd come in with a flask of coffee and an old paperback book under her arm, a ritual that had become almost weekly, whenever she could manage with her hectic schedule. She would drink her coffee and chat away with her colleague and friend, telling him all the gossip from the station, the frustrations with her latest cases and when she couldn't think of anything more to say she would get out her book and read aloud softly. At first she'd entered with hopes that this time would be the one where he'd crack an eye open and make a sarky comment about whoever she'd been telling him about, but that hope soon died and she found more that she was doing this to combat her own feelings of loneliness rather than any hope that he'd wake up.

And then one day she'd been pulled aside by a nurse with a mixture of happiness and sadness in her eyes as she was about to go in. The words should have just been of excitement but instead they came out a warning, he'd been awake for three days but there was no one on his next of kin register and he'd refused to allow any of the staff to contact anyone. He was angry, she was warned, but she'd refused to believe it, after all that sounded nothing like her John. But he had been, with a fury that she'd never thought him capable of, she'd ended up leaving ten minutes later after a one-sided shouting match and a cup of ice-chips having been flung at her head. She'd barely managed to suppress the tears until she got out of the room, storming away wiping frantically at her reddening eyes while the nurses watched her with pity. But rather than give in, the following day she called in sick and then went back to the hospital to try again.

The next two months were almost as hellish as the last seventeen. She spent her work days trying to convince old friends to go and see him, but some still held unfair resentments about the outcome of the raid, others would make promises about going she knew they'd never keep, after all no one wants to see the harsh reality of a job gone wrong, knowing one day it could be them. Those that were brave enough to go were soon chased away by the ogre who occupied the hospital bed where her friend used to be. Resolutely, she refused to give in.

She didn't know how she had the strength to go in some days, to hold her gaze with the trapped tiger that John Kennex had become, trapped inside the limitations of his own broken body. He'd raged at her to go away, thrown things, said the nastiest things he could think of, all to get her to leave. Or he'd sunk into the deepest pit of depression, barely acknowledging her existence, as though his head and all the thoughts that swirled in there were too heavy for him to lift his chin from where it rested listlessly on his chest. Only once had she come in to find him sobbing uncontrollably but he'd gotten angry then too, trying to drive her away so she couldn't see his pain.

Physically, he got better quicker than expected, although he was far too thin, he put on a little of the weight he'd lost and he worked hard in physiotherapy pushing himself through the pain and exhaustion. The doctors believed it was part of his drive to get better but Sandra suspected it was more to do with punishing himself for what happened. He hated the prosthetic leg they'd given him, at first had refused to use it but eventually it was as though he came to need the pain that came with every step, the pressure, the blisters and the chafed skin on his still raw and healing stump.

Eventually he was deemed physically well enough to leave, although he still had sessions with his physio and his psychiatrist on a weekly basis. Just like when he'd woken up, he'd managed to go home without Sandra knowing. She'd told him more than once that as soon as he was declared fit that she wanted to be the one to bust him out but instead he'd called a taxi and made it back to his rooftop apartment all by himself. That stubbornness seemed to be all that was left of the old John.

She'd wanted to go and see him straight away but rioting had broken out in the 10th district and all officers were called in to deal with the disorder. For four days straight the 10th district burned, with more pockets of violence all over the city, two more springing up as fast as they could quell one. Sandra and many other officers didn't make it home for the entire four days, catching the odd catnap here or there whenever the made it back to recharge the MX's. When she'd finally made it home she'd slept for sixteen hours straight and then she'd gone to see him.

She'd knocked for about five minutes, giving him long enough realise she wasn't going away, to get dressed and hobble to the door. When she got no answer she produced a lock pick device and opened it herself.

"John? It's Sandra." She called out as she entered the small one bedroom apartment. She'd been there once before, a few years ago the whole team had had New Years Eve off for once and John and Anna had invited everyone to a party at their warehouse-conversion apartment. The views of the fireworks through the big glass ceiling had been incredible. The pair of them had seemed so happy then and Sandra still felt bitterly angry at the woman's abandonment of him.

The apartment was small and open plan so she could see him as soon as she entered, or at least the one hand that was visible hanging limply over the arm of the sofa. The TV was on playing an old sci-fi movie but she could tell he wasn't watching it. She approached the sofa and stared down at the sleeping man on it, he was sprawled face down dressed in a black vest and boxers, one arm hung over the arm of the sofa, the other cradling a near-empty bottle of bourbon that was resting on the floor. His long left leg was stretched out while the stump of his right was buried under cushions as though he had been trying to hide the sight of it from himself. He smelt of stale booze and sweat and Sandra guessed he'd not had a shower since the hospital.

She eased the bottle out of his grasp and stroked his too long hair from his face with a motherly touch that she'd always felt didn't come naturally to her. She heard him mumble "Anna," into the cushion but he didn't stir. As she took the bottle back into the kitchenette she looked through his cupboards and his fridge. The fridge made her want to gag, no one had been to the apartment since that day he'd been wounded. What little food had been in there had turned to rot and mould had grown on every surface. The cupboards were little better, a few tins of soup and a bottle of discoloured cooking oil was all that survived.

As she shut the cupboard she glanced up and caught sight of his bedroom through the open door. She ventured in, worried about what she'd find. The bed was unmade, but at least it looked like he'd tried to sleep in it. But her eyes were drawn to the dresser on the other side of the room. His synthetic leg was laid on it surrounded by pieces of mirror, abandoned bottles of Anna's perfume and make up and broken trinkets that had once stood on the pale wood surface. It had clearly been thrown with some force and had taken everything out in its path. Sandra wasn't sure whether it had been the trinkets, cheap souvenirs that Anna had always brought back from her travels or his own reflection that had been the intended target but the resulting damage had been significant. She found the charging station he'd been provided with discarded by the door, still in it's packaging so she set it up, plugged it in and rested the prosthetic on the charging cradle. She'd not had a chance to look at it yet, it was a thing of beauty really, she thought bittersweetly, she just wished there hadn't been a need for it.

She re-entered the living room with a sense of purpose, she ruffled the hair of the drunk man on the sofa, "I'll be back soon," she promised as she left.

* * *

John awoke to the sound of someone moving in his apartment. His first thought was that Anna had come back even as the more morose part of his hungover brain was telling him it was too good to be true. He then felt something warm and wet nudge at his hand. He turned his protesting head and looked down to his hand that was trailing off the sofa onto the floor. A black Labrador looked up at him and gave his hand another lick.

"You remember Lily don't you?" A familiar voice asked him from across the room. "She was just a puppy when you last met."

John struggled to sit upright on the sofa, fighting back the nausea and pounding head. Lily sat up too and rested her head on his left knee. His only knee, he thought sadly. He looked over at his uninvited visitor and saw his boss dressed in jeans and an old tee shirt. Her hands were in a pair of yellow rubber kitchen gloves and she knelt on his kitchen worktop as she scrubbed furiously at his overhead cupboards. Lily nudged him with her head and he reached down absentmindedly to scratch behind her ear.

Sandra smiled at him and clambered down from her perch. She came over to him and stood, gloved hands on her hips and in her best commanding officers voice said, "Are you going to get in the shower or am I going to have to scrub you too?"

Once upon a time John would have had a flirty comeback to that, but now he just mumbled, "Yes Ma'am," too embarrassed to argue.

"Good. Do you need help getting there?" She asked.

He shook his head, pushing himself up off the sofa onto his unsteady leg. All those hours in physio had made him good at hopping around. But Sandra took one disapproving look at him and wrapped her arm around his waist to steady him. He found himself leaning on the petite woman more than he would have liked as he hobbled through his bedroom into the en-suite bathroom. He noticed with overwhelming guilt that his bed had been made with clean sheets, his clothes had been picked up off the floor and the carnage had been caused on the dresser had all been swept away. Now the dresser was clear save for his synthetic leg on its charging dock. His bathroom gleamed and smelt of cleaning products. A fresh towel and change of clothes had been laid out on the closed toilet lid within easy reach of the shower. A brand new toothbrush sat on the sink with a new tube of toothpaste, shampoo and shower gel stood ready for use.

"You got it from here?" She asked and he nodded. "Take your time, I'll make you something to eat. You need to put some meat back on your bones." She left him alone making him promise to shout if he needed help. He nodded his agreement, knowing full well the last thing he would do would be to ask for assistance.

Once alone he gripped the sink tightly and stared at himself in the mirror. He'd been avoiding his reflection since he'd woken up because it was like looking at a stranger. His hair was too long, his face too thin, the thick dark beard that had crept over his jaw didn't look right on him but he hadn't been bothered to shave it. His well-built physique that he'd always prided himself on was gone, leaving sallow, scarred skin stretched over fragile bone. His stink was even more obvious to himself, now that his apartment was clean and no longer smelled of must and mould. It disgusted him. He disgusted himself, he realised, and not just physically.

He emerged from the bathroom almost an hour later, clean, shaven and dressed in the black tee shirt and cotton gym shorts that Sandra had laid out for him. He opened the bathroom door and found that she'd found his crutches and placed them propped up by the door. It had gotten dark while he'd been in there and the stars were just starting to become visible though the large glass ceiling. He took them and with an ease he'd picked up that summer he'd broken his foot playing high school football, propelled himself into the living room. He was greeted by Lily who came up to him and wagged her tail happily before following him to the sofa. The oven was on and the smell of food made is stomach growl.

Sandra had finished her frantic cleaning frenzy and was sat on his sofa flicking through the TV channels. She looked up as he came into the room and gave him a warm smile. There was a glass of water and a packet of headache pills on the coffee table in front of him.

"Feel better?" She asked.

John nodded and sat down, laying his crutches carefully down by the sofa. He put his head in his hands and took a deep shuddering breath, when he looked back up at her his eyes swam with unshed tears.

"I don't deserve this." He said, his voice wavering. Sandra just shuffled a bit closer to him on the sofa and put her arm across his shoulders.

"Awful doesn't even being to describe what I've been to you." He continued. "You had every right to leave me here to rot in my own filth, everyone else did."

"They shouldn't have." Sandra said icily, angry at all those who once dared to call this man their friend.

"I don't blame them, I've been a selfish bastard. Hell, I woulda been the first one out the door."

Sandra shook her head. "I don't believe you would be." She answered quietly. "No one should have to go through this alone. No one should have to go through this at all, least of all you."

"I killed all those officers. It was my operation, my intel that got fucked up. I lead them in there to their slaughter. Of all the people to make it out alive, the last one should have been me."

"I don't want to hear any of that!" Sandra said sternly, "do you remember when I'd just been made lieutenant and our team got that human trafficking case? Do you remember what you said to me when you found me on the station roof contemplating my clusterfuck with a cheap bottle of vodka?"

John nodded, he remembered it well. For a horrifying moment he'd thought she'd been thinking about jumping. She hadn't, had just wanted somewhere quiet to drown her sorrows. "That's different..." he started.

Sandra raised an eyebrow. "How?"

He sighed, knowing he wasn't going to win that argument and a ghost of a smile flitted across his lips. "What a pair we make." He said instead.

"Cops, keeping liquor stores in business since the dawn of time." She laughed and miraculously John laughed with her.

"What can I do to make it up to you?" John asked quietly.

"You can start by looking after yourself." She said firmly. "I want you to stop blaming yourself, start eating again, you're too skinny, cut back on the bourbon and get back out into the real world."

"I'm not sure I can." He knew he'd never been more honest about anything in his life.

"No one said it would be easy. But I want you to try. And when you're ready, there's a desk back at the station that's still got your name on it."

John looked at her incredulously, "you think they'll have me back?"

Sandra smiled, "well no one has shredded the tyres on a cruiser in quite some time. And your absence has saved a lot of paperwork, but as far as I'm concerned you never really left. Your badge and your sidearm are in my desk drawer waiting for you."

"I don't know if..." he said hesitantly.

"That's alright, we'll see how things go, all you've promised me so far is that you'll try. But first things first, you hungry?"

"Starved." John agreed and realised he actually was for the first time since he'd woken up.

She got up from the sofa and started pottering in the kitchen. "Hope you like lasagne," she was saying, "sorry it's not homemade but my cooking skills are a bit rusty. You're eating all the salad though, don't want you catching scurvy."

John reached down to make a fuss over Lily who had chosen to lie down on his foot. "I don't know where your mum gets her faith in me," he told the dog, "but I think I owe it to her to prove her right don't you?" Lily wagged her tail and barked happily.

The End

* * *

Authors Note: Okay so I know I'm part way through another story and I promise that is all in hand but my sister introduced me to Almost Human by buying me the DVD's for Christmas and I'm not sure I've ever become obsessed with something so quickly. Why is it all the good series get cancelled before their time? *sob*

Anyway, I've spent the best part of a day pouring my heart and soul into this little fic so I hope you like it. As this is a little known show in a tiny fandom I that if you've read this far you do me the honour of reviewing it as you might be the only one who does.

Usual disclaimer applies, I don't own this show and am not making money from this fic, if I were I'd be making sure it would never end.

Thanks for reading.


End file.
